


Blue

by Felixbug



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Drug Addiction, Gen, Lyrium Addiction, Minor Violence, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Relapse, Suicide, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-17
Updated: 2015-09-17
Packaged: 2018-04-21 07:05:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4819775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Felixbug/pseuds/Felixbug
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Trespasser. Redemption and recovery are messier than expected.</p><p>(suicide tag is not referring to any canon character)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blue

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Not to invite drama or debate, but I'm not a Cullen fan. I'm saying that not to shit on your fav, but because I absolutely despise reading fic by people who dislike characters I love and then finding out later. If that doesn't bother you, read on - this definitely isn't a negative/character bashing fic. I'm a recovering addict with PTSD and the lyrium addict clinic ending of Trespasser gave me more respect for Cullen, even if for various personal reasons I'll never be entirely comfortable with him. I wrote this while recovering from a relapse, and it's mostly addict-feels word vomit. 
> 
> My Inquisitor is a mage Trevelyan, trans man, started out pro-Circle and ended up becoming more pro-freedom over time, and chose Leliana as Divine. My Hawke, mentioned briefly, romanced Anders and Justice and is as pro-mage as them if not more so. 
> 
> Please read the tags before reading, this fic has a lot of potential triggers.

_I need a drink_ , Cullen thinks. This time the thought takes root and doesn’t let him go, tight and dark as he paces between the cots. He can hear people dying – people just like him. The thought’s more frequent these days, and he knows enough of this to worry. He knows enough to lie awake at night wondering how far this path will go, and if he’s as damned as he ever was. But the drink isn’t blue, and that’s something. Maker help him, that’s something.

He drinks that night – and again the night after. The pattern’s an easy one to fall into, he knows the steps of this dance and can do it without thought. Six patients die that week, and another of his healers leaves. No mage wants to fight to save dying Templars, and when he hears the threats and hate that pour from their feverish lips he can’t blame the healers for leaving. Can’t blame the Divine for ending the Order, can’t blame Kris for pushing him away once he found out what he’d been, what he’d done. He sees the worst of himself in every patient who screams for lyrium, who screams for death, who sobs and begs when it comes for them at last.

Most die. Cullen thinks it will get easier. It never does.

***

“You’re doing good work.”

Kris looks so different now, even ignoring his arm – Cullen wonders about what kind of magic could have granted him his sharp, stubbled jaw and the gravel in his voice. Kris says he’s trained as a healer, but Cullen knows that kind of magic, and knows even spirit healers can’t do _this._ He wonders when he stopped caring. Kris is happy, he’s living the way he always wanted, and he’s here where no one else is willing to look – in the face of that, in the face of all the changes they’ve survived, Cullen doesn’t think a Templar’s duties mean much. Not these days. He can overlook the question of _maleficar_ in his mind when it means this – someone who won’t ignore these dying remnants of a world that no longer exists.

“I’m doing what I can,” he says, and Kris catches him by the wrist.

“You’re shaking,” he says, and frowns. “You’re sweating. You’re – Maker’s fucking breath, when?”

“I don’t know what you…”

“When?” Kris snarls.

The drink helped for a while, but it wasn’t blue. It wasn’t blue and it wasn’t enough when another man died too far gone to remember his name, begging for just one more dose. Cullen wonders if he could explain to Kris, but six months scrubbing vomit from the floors and watching once-proud Templars wither to skin and bone has taught him that they’re invisible here. He was somebody when he was strong – when he could say he’d survived it, and led the Inquisition’s forces without falling, without succumbing, without showing how weak he really was. He’s not that man any more. With the hum of lyrium tugging at his mind and singing in his veins, he wonders if he ever really was.

“I’m staying,” Kris says. “You need help.”

***

The clinic’s better with Kris here – cleansing magic saving patients from the spread of disease that sank claws into weakened bodies. On the second day, Lyra casts a smite in the depths of her delirium, and Kris scrapes himself off the floor, spits bloody vomit between his feet and keeps right on going. Cullen hates him a little for it – they’re both facing down their worst fears here, but Kris doesn’t shatter. Kris doesn’t seem to hear the call of the blue when he administers the ever shrinking doses to the shivering husks of patients.

After fourteen days and nights, Cullen is on his feet again. He knows he’s not recovered, not truly – but he can stand, and he can work. Kris shows him lists of names – two black Xs for patients lost. It’s the lowest number he’s seen in months.

“Picked up a few things in Kirkwall,” Kris says. Spirit energy hums around his fingers as he takes Brandon’s fever down and the thrashing and whimpering stops. “You know how it is. New friends, new skills.”

***

Erin served at Kinloch – Cullen remembers her. She looks different now – cheeks gaunt, nails bitten to stubs, hair thin and lank. She takes the blanket he offers and wraps it around her shivering shoulders, breathing slowly as she looks down into the bucket between her knees.

“It’s going to happen,” he says gently.

“No.” She grits her teeth and shakes her head. “No – don’t mind the fever, don’t mind the aches, I won’t – won’t vomit. I _won’t._ ”

She sobs prayers between thick, choking retches, and Cullen holds her hair back as her shoulders heave. The dirty blond strands come loose in his hand – she’s falling apart at the seams, and her skin is translucent when he peels her sweat-drenched clothes from her body and helps her onto a cot.

Two days later he watches Kris pull her back from the brink of death, and the light between his fingers is the bluest blue he’s ever seen. The elegant twisting of his fingers brings back another Kinloch memory, and when Kris shoots him a concerned glance the reflected light in his eyes is blue – so blue – and for a moment he appears lit from within.

“Just spirit healing,” Kris says later. “Not the first time you’ve seen it, surely?”

It isn’t – isn’t even all that rare – but Cullen doesn’t forget. Watching mages is a hard habit to break, and the first time he reads Kris’s letters it barely registers as wrong.

***

Lyra leaves in autumn, and Kris sits by Cullen as they watch her disappear over the horizon – just a speck by the time she’s gone. She’s alone. Her family stopped writing in the first month, and she isn’t the only one.

“I’m not sorry,” Kris says. “Not about who I associate with, or what I believe, or any of it.”

“You’re not angry?”

“With you?” Kris shrugs. “You did what you _do_. I didn’t come here under the illusion you’d changed. If I valued my privacy or dignity do you think I’d surround myself with Templars? I came here because you’re trying.”

“You used to hate him.”

“I used to hate myself, too. I got over it.” Kris summons a faint blue light around his fingers, and it spills over his wrist like water. “You don’t have to act surprised with me. You knew from the day I told you I was a spirit healer. You read my letters for proof, that’s all. Maker, Rutherford, I told you I’d taken over a free clinic in Kirkwall – who do you think arranged that?”

“Then why are you here? He must be glad we’re rotting here. He must _love_ this. Vengeance at last. Why do you _care_?”

“I’m doing exactly what he’d do.” Kris sighs, and the blue light fades. “You wouldn’t understand.”

***

Brandon leaves in Winter. Erin doesn’t leave at all. Cullen finds her cold and still with the blood from her cut wrists clotting thickly in the blankets. It should hurt more than it does, and when he catches Kris’s eye he knows he’s thinking the same. This isn’t a first for either of them.

“This shouldn’t be normal, should it?” Cullen says finally as Erin’s body burns. “People shouldn’t have seen so much of this it stops feeling wrong.”

“I used to think it was how things had to be. But no, I don’t think it should.” Kris glances at him. “Are you going to slip?”

“I sometimes wonder why I try so hard not to.” The fire cracks and snaps, and Cullen’s eyes burn from the smoke but he doesn’t look away. “Half the time I don’t even want to stop. I don’t care if it kills me. It burns my mind out and I don’t have to think about – about anything.”

“Straight answer, Rutherford.”

“No.” His nails bite into his palms. “No, I’m not.”

***

All he can taste is blue. All he can see. The snow is crisp and clean, the world’s been bleached white and the sky is endless azure. Cullen squints in the light, and takes a step. He can hear the crisp crunch of his boots on the ground, he can feel the bite of cold air against his skin, and he can feel the undercurrent of magic that flows through the air and earth to where Kris sleeps. He is strong, he is focused, he is _alive._

It’s more than he remembers – more than it’s ever been before. Tolerance, he remembers far too late – he has none, not any more. He’s beyond strong – he’s beyond thought. His mind caves in on itself, spilling memories he doesn’t want like ink across the clean, blue structure of his thoughts. Reality and imagination mix – the Chantry shatters into a pillar of fire at a wave of Kris’s hand, and when the order for Annulment comes, it’s Cullen’s voice that gives the order. Their roles are set and he’s the monster in this – he’s always been. He screams awake, forgetting that he’d even slept, and Kris presses a glass of water into his hand.

“Overdose,” Kris says. “If you were a mage, you’d have died.”

“I deserve it,” he howls, and the glass shatters somewhere that sounds so far away. “I broke, Kris – I thought I resisted, but I broke. I let them _ruin_ me…”

Something lurches inside him, something born of pure instinct. The power is like muscle memory after all this time – he’s lashing out against the demons that still whisper in his mind, against himself, against everything and everyone. He hears Kris cry out and he’s laughing, sobbing, curled in tight on himself as the darkness wells up again, and he slips into the bliss of unconsciousness.

***

“It’ll happen again.”

“I know.” Cullen doesn’t look at Kris – he looks out at the garden, watching his patients as they walk and talk and smile and laugh as if they’re healed. They’re not – he knows that now.

“I’m leaving in a month.” Cullen nods and doesn’t turn around. “Not because of this – I got a letter from A– from a friend today, him and – well, they’re leaving the city for a while and someone needs to be there for the clinic. I’ve been gone six months. It’s time.”

“Are you asking me to promise to stay clean?”

“No. I’m asking you to keep trying.” Cullen turns, finally, and winces at the sight of the bruise on Kris’s face. He fell hard under the force of the smite, and it’s an ugly yellow-purple in the daylight.

“And if I can’t?”

“Then try to try.” Kris smiles weakly. “Best you can manage, day to day. Pick yourself up when you fuck up. You know the routine.”

“Why do you care?” His sharp gesture at Kris’s face makes him flinch, and Cullen wonders how Kris can stand the sight of him. “Answer me, for once – why?”

“Healing and salvation.” Kris shrugs. “No one gets what they deserve – just what they need.”


End file.
